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GAO Sting Finds More Fake Military Parts From China
Nidi62 writes "The Government Accountability Office, through a fictitious company, recently requisitioned parts from China in order to determine if the Chinese government was living up to its promises of battling counterfeit parts. The report from the GAO found that '334 of 396 vendors who offered to sell parts to the fictitious company were from China' and that 'all 16 parts eventually purchased by the fake company came from 13 China-based vendors and all were determined by an independent testing laboratory to be counterfeit.' The parts requested were supposedly for use in F-15s, MV-22 Ospreys, and nuclear submarines, and were requested as new parts. The report (PDF) also says that in the past three years, over one million counterfeit parts came from Chinese companies. This stands in sharp contrast to the Chinese government's promise to clamp down on the production of counterfeit parts in China."
China looks out for China, nobody else.
I thought there was security issues from buying parts in countries we don't particularly trust.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
The federal government of the United States should not blame China for this, it's called being Shanghaied for a reason, and it's not a new term.
The reason the market is ripe for these sorts of problems is the governments own fault. There used to be lots of chipmakers in the United States. It costs to much to do business in the United States. Businesses have gotten in bed with the government and bought their own representatives and more important industry regulators to control the market to benefit the biggest players. When the biggest players can no longer afford to do business here they pick up and leave the country but the regulations they paid for remain.
Mix that with an unfavorable tax economy, actual government incentives to send business overseas (still haven't figured that one out), and punishment via tax brackets for people who attempt to move up in class and of course the market is ripe for China to supply fake chips. We ran all the good businesses out of the country, just how many lobbyist DOES China have?
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How can they be surprised that China's pirating designs? For that matter, substandard military parts aren't limited to China. I've heard of several cases of manufacturers here in the USA who didn't care to supply the best.
Turns out, the capitalists won't be selling the rope with which they'll be hanged. They'll be paying for it themselves.
China: "offer" to sell.
Some Guy in Boeing/Lockheed/USAF: I'll take it.
The Chinese are not forcing anybody to buy their parts.
...they need to buy parts from all of the vendors and use our international investigative abilities to find out who the actual people selling the parts are, then test the parts. When parts come back bad, we need to ensure that we don't do business with those people again, and that we publish who we bought from and what the results are. That might stop a lot of companies from buying from those vendors. It certainly wouldn't stop all, but it could help.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I don't know what it's like for military grade parts, but for a lot of consumer items (clothing especially - tennis shoes, pants, suits, etc.) you can actually get knock-offs in China that are basically identical. They won't be any different than the "real" items (and in some cases are made in the same factories). You can get an "Armani" silk suit from a tailor in the silk market in Beijing for like a quarter to a half the price. High quality stuff.
SOME of the knockoffs, electronics especially, are hilariously sketchy. Phones that don't work, external hard drives that actually have USB flash sticks instead of spinning platters inside them, external enclosures that don't fit any form factor, usb connectors that are so shallow no USB plug can actually fit, etc.
Why are ANY government parts being bought from China? It's insanity because if we do go to war with China what are we supposed to do beg them for replacement parts so we can bomb them? The military should NEVER depend on foreign suppliers, PERIOD! Pay offs and tax dollars going to China instead of Detroit as they used to.
If the ficticious company gets 16 insanely low priced offers that are too good to be true and only accepts those 16 offers, they know have lots to write into their report and can congratulate themselves on a job well done (maybe even get a bonus at the end of the year?). The other issue would be what incentive would a foreign government have to crack down on manufacturers producing fake military components for a country that builds alliances against it? I mean, if an American nuclear submarine happens to sink due to faulty parts, that seems to be a good thing from their perspective. One less submarine that just happens to be sitting in their EEZ taking a well-deserved vacation and not being a threat at all despite being armed to the teeth... I mean, just because we've placed an armed nuclear submarine (or maybe several, depends on how good your detection equipment is) in your zone doesn't mean we're being unfriendly at all, honest! We're just picking up those parts we ordered from you. Now, you're sure these parts are fine? We'd be in a bit of pickle if something happened under all that water.
Why did they need to waste money on a sting operation? Correction: why did they need to wast MORE money...? And granted the U.S. trades with China, but why the fuck would they source military parts from a country that is openly antagonistic if not outright aggressive to one of their allies, namely Taiwan? Or who backs North Korea all the way. Or who supports Iran getting nuclear capability. Don't they remember that Chinese fighter planes aggressively caused a mid air collision and forced an American navy surveillance plane to land in China a few years ago while it was flying over international waters above the the South China Sea?
What kind of bug fuck retarded moron in the military logistics department had them order parts for sophisticated military equipment from China anyway? America has an almost $300,000,000,000 per year trade deficit (that's THREE HUNDRED BILLION dollars) with China and they are spending Tax Payers Money buying military parts from there? If the government is going to spend hard earned tax dollars, they might as well buy from American companies who operate factories in America. Or does "Buy American" mean buying from companies who outsource jobs to China? Someone in the purchasing department at the pentagon needs a fucking kick in the balls and a slap up side the head. Gah! The country deserves what they get when they do this.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
These aren't expensive handbags. What does counterfeit mean? Do the parts meet the specifications?
-Dave
as a conservative republican, i am glad to see that the US government is embracing the free enterprise system of capitalism.
the chinese communist party is clearly our ally in this movement towards freedom.
the labor unions? not so much. buncha commies.
im glad we have that ironed out, so that conservatives can stop conflating them.
i wore a uniform made in mexico, sat on furniture produced by inmates at federal prisons, and drove around in a truck fueled by oil from god knows where.
none of the people who built this stuff had 'freedom' by any modern definition of the word.
Don't buy shit from China...ever. Case closed.
I would think that installing Chinese-sourced electronics in F-15s might lead to a compromise of the F-15s availability in war time.
I thought the US had experience in supplying sabotage parts to the former USSR, I am surprised we would buy parts from a nation that is less than our best friend.
an Iranian Tomcat and a modern US military system?
Iran knows where its jets came from.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Bullshit. As is demonstrated by TFA.
You want it done right then you pay for it to be done right.
Finding someone who will do it cheaper and do it wrong is easy.
Why would the US military buy parts made in China?
And if they do, why wouldn't they do it with strict specs and quality controls?
Everybody knows that you get crap from China if you don't look very closely. We have quality people traveling to China all the time.
Those backplanes that started to overheat and smolder from ions left in the material due to rinsing with tap water and the resultant 100% recall were fun.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
It's the second one.
The companies want bigger profits.
So the companies outsource whatever they can, wherever they can.
And our government decides that that supply chain is "good enough".
All the government has to do is require that the parts be made 100% in the USofA and there would be a huge change.
As China did so amongst themselves a while ago(heavy bags of rice where cannons should be), they do to others today.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The first sentence of this article contains the word "dramaitc". It may have some good content, but it fails in basic quality. It lost me at hello.
It turns out there are a few categories of "fake":
A - just the shape and markings imitated
B - factory rejects
C - refurbished parts
D - "ghost shift" parts
E - remarked near-compatible parts.
Now, what happens if someone orders parts that have been out of production for 20 years: the market supplies an alternative! And with merchandise changing hands often the differences get lost. It is not al malvolence.
It sounds to me a bit like "We ordered 30 painting by Van Gogh. When they were delivered the next month they all turned out to be fake! Blame China!".
So... if you want to keen some equipment operational for 20 years, also keep the parts for 20 years.
If the US DoD are purchasing electronic components on the secondary market from marketplaces like ICSource, IC2IC and posting RFQ's with NATO part numbers expecting the Chinese vendors to decipher them and then interpret the MIL standards they specify with complete accuracy then they need their heads checked.
Vendors peddling re-manufactured / recycled stock or stock with modified date codes will be the least of their worries.
If they expect that level of accuracy and QC with no effort on their part then they should stick to buying components directly from the original manufacturer.
And if the manufacturer EOL's a critical component for your $10B aircraft then make damned sure you stock up before the last buy production run is gone!
reflects more on the apparent incompetence of US DoD contractors conformity/QA/inspection procedures and personnel, if they even have any
I suspect that this comes down to American weapons manufacturers losing business and getting their cronies in the government to make some noise about it.
That being said, I do think that the military shouldn't be buying anything (a) off the Internet from unknown entities and (b) from anyone but the original equipment manufacturer. Seems surprising in fact, that they could do so. Perhaps there are middle man providers who are supposed to be selling OEM parts but who themselves are buying on the Internet.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
China: "offer" to sell.
Some Guy in Boeing/Lockheed/USAF: I'll take it.
American overconfident arrogance + WWIII + China/Russia pushes magic button and all our fancy gadgets go dark at the right moment = US fucked beyond belief.
China and Russia new world superpowers.
Bright (?) future ahead.
(...Profit?)
They set up a sting that bought just 16 items. Did they also ensure that the purchases were made from sources that they expected to get fakes from or did they carry out a genuine 'best value' procurement? If they did the former, this sounds trivial. Any good purchasing decision should ensure a check on the reputation and record of the vendor.
Well, it must be me... and I am not a North American Citizen, but buy MILITARY parts in other countries seems quite unsafe, not to mention dumb... if a country wants to keep rule and not having that parts malfunctioning, why do they buy from other countries, especially China, that has too one of the largest, if not the largest military in the world. A few years back, it was discovered that chips that China sold to the US Military contained some undocumented features, assembly wise, this puts in perspective that China can interfere in worlds machines if it came to that point. Long story short, In my way of thinking, all the military equipment should be done inhouse.
I'm European. We have different views over here, while still being free-market capitalists.
Our EU parliament and commissioners have been working for a while to even up the regulatory shortfall by assessing the likely economic benefits per product of not complying with environmental legislation and adding that cost as an import tax, the idea being to require suppliers making products for EU markets to produce them to EU environmental standards, or pay a tax that would be designed to cancel out the economic benefits of using polluting options.
Ways it would work include factoring in the electrical cost and taxing a carbon charge on the difference between net pollution per KwH here and per KwH there. We're planning to levy the same idea on aviation to the EU, at which point it wil suddenly become news in the USA as I dont imagine your long-haul airlines will be very pleased. You could do it too, based mainly at China.
When you;re as big as either the EU collectively or the USA singly, little things like pre-existing agreements can be overridden or overwritten, its just a matter of willpower and courage.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Those companies making parts are owned by communist party, they can do whatever they want in China. Countfieit ? What counterfeit ? The Chinese government actually encourages companies to use reverse engineering to produce parts for they weaponry.
These are US military parts, they were ordered from China, which isn't license to make them. So they knew when they bought them they were bound to be fake, and any such part from China would have to be fake.
So they ordered knowing they would be fake.
It also means any such part coming from China would be checked and seized at the border. They do get some fakes through, but the article gives an exaggerated impression of the quantity by ordering parts that were bound to be fake and would be known to be seized at the border.
It's marketing for 'ACTA' the anti-counterfeit treaty that became a giant copyright treaty.
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Maybe we need to hold a hunger games for the brass. Shake em up a little, get them back to reality.
Of course for a lot of brass reality starts at academy and they're coddled and protected all the way to the top. Just like the 1%.
This should be a huge wake-up call for Americans. Now, I'm not on the whole OWS bandwagon thing. I think it's bonkers, but I don't disagree there's a 1% and that they do us major damage as if they're an invasive enemy combatant on our soil getting the upper hand.
Only here we see them militarized. SO stupid, SO profit-driven, SO heads-up-their-asses, that they WOULD COMMISSION WAR MATERIALS FROM THE COUNTRY THAT THREATENED TO NUKE THEM OVER TAIWAN'S UNTAPPED NATURAL RESOURCES.
Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!!?!!!
I think we have a pretty good case, here, IF any war materials were acquired in good faith FROM China, to take any number of generals and majors and wring their fucking necks for treason!
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
America's manufacturing has been giving up their ability. At the same time, China is in a cold war with the west and is using the very same technique that America used against USSR. This is not about profits. It is about knowing what we are up to and gleaning what information they can. It would be in the west's interest to return the military/intel back to the security that we had during the USSR cold war. That includes bringing back our electronic manufacturing and steel work. Likewise, America needs to address the massive trade deficits with China. That should be done via a scaled tariffs. Per WTO rules, once 2 nations have more than 10% deficits, then corrective actions can and should be taken.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
sigh. Iraq and Afghanistan are NOT the same thing. We were attacked from Afghanistan and they continued to hide Al Qaeda. In fact, when we invaded them, NOBODY blamed us. Of course, the ineptness shown by W's admin at Tora Bora and later pulling out of afghanistan without nation building was just insane.
However, Iraq, like Grenada, and Lebanon, were neo-con's at war. That was not America. We have Chickenhawks that want to appear tough, but more importantly, want to play a poor job of lets grab resources. That was not America. That was corrupt politicians. Obama is NOT one of them.
China's manipulation of their money, their subsidies and their dumping is causing massive issues all over. However, it is targeting America directly. At some point, we WILL take action on the trade front. To do that, we will no doubt have to balance our budget (again) or at the least get it below 250B / year. Our problem is that it is hard to do that while helping EU with their massive economic issues (and yes, we ARE helping them).
I agree, we know China to be bigger liars than a fleet of Nigerian spammers, yet we somehow feel compelled to continue to do ANY business with them. ,liars attract their own kind like flies to shit.
Just think without China we would be forced to find plastic products elsewhere, Walmart would just die.( O.K. lost a bunch of congress and senate on that one)
We'd have to fire up our old rare earth mine and focus some money on it. ( lost a few more) We'd quit selling chunks of the U.S. to China.( Wow, emptied out half the room) Probably have to consider Iraq and Afghanistan conquered and turn them over to China as payment on loans, but who could really care, there's more oil in the world. Let the mideast sweat having China accumulating territory at their borders while looking hungry for more ( Omama left and the crickets can be heard) See
Yeah, fuck China, let's see how well they do without us, that will put the world on more equal footing everywhere.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
"The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
news flash... Governments lie, all governments all the time.. new around here?
That worked well for the USSR, eh?
Business is choosing to offshore, not government - thus business is at fault for such choice. Cut off the means to go offshore and the problem disappears; businesses learn to adapt to receiving the pain that they formerly gave through offshoring.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
"consider Iraq and Afghanistan conquered and turn them over to China as payment on loans" Wow, I love it!
This is exactly why I stopped shopping for nuclear submarine parts on E-Bay! ~v3ctor
Military Industrial Complex too big, make too dumb.
You are right about government meddling having a lot to do with that.
The only entity that is meddling with anything, is the business. Businesses are using their position of influence to effect force, which is constructed out of the ability to remove choice.
The administrative cost of an employee to a business owner beyond what an employee immediately sees in many businesses is due to regulations and requirements that prevents companies from hiring more people. In turn they simply demand more of the people they do have. This is part of the reason staffing firms are so popular, they put the burden of the employment paperwork and benefits on someone else and remove much of the legal liability that can be associated with firing someone.
That is the very reason why staffing agencies need to die a sudden, painful death. This can be done via requiring cost/liability parity for all forms of labor, in any function or form, making it illegal to perform such liability/benefit circumvention, or a full ban on non-FTE labor for anything. In addition, kill offshoring while removing all forms of non-citizenship residency.
They simply tell the staffing firm they don't need this person anymore and the staffing firm is free to lay someone off with the justification their position is gone, even if they're replacing that person with someone else.
Since businesses and staffing firms have conducted themselves in this manner, they cannot be trusted to act in good faith.
The only valid action is for the government to make this dishonesty impossible, amongst the other forms of dishonesty that exist. Such dishonesty is why providers of indirect or non FTE labor have no place.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
OK I read all 3 links... can't tell whether these are specificly counterfeited weapons parts or whether these are standard parts (e.g. sound card) that may be used in a military application. There's a bit of a difference. Specific parts made specifically for a military use is a different problem than military purchases of standard grade electronics. Did the GAO simply type "sound card wanted" into Alibaba.com? Difficult to tell from the GAO report whether this is hype, but the two stories ABOUT the GAO report definitely have a hype-ish tint.
There is a big cultural difference in how "patent violation" is perceived in China. The concept of "shanzai", which is taking something someone else made and copying it or adding a touch of flair (improvement) to it is a kind of "underdog" applause-line. Shanzai Isn't Necessarily Directed at US. Like a guitar riff, Chinese tend to laugh and smile when someone tries to one-up a bigger company, and make something as good or better than the original. Like the IPhone V. http://retroworks.blogspot.com/2011/10/shanzai-vs-patents-future-stock.html
This doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned, it's just that you find this everywhere in China, directed at everybody and at no one in particular. The page from GAO just doesn't give enough information whether we should rally or whether it's a false flag put up by USA military contractors who are known to sell $375 toilet seats for submarines.
Gently reply
You want all those jobs back from China?
Ironclad regulation would restore work by eliminating the avenues for which businesses could avoid citizens.
The reason why those things aren't made here anymore is because of comparative advantage. We can still manufacture those things as good or better as China, but we do other things even better. And because we focus on those other things, and because we can't do everything at once, those manufacturing jobs moved overseas.
Comparative advantage is a stack of fallacies:
* That we can't do everything at once
* That there is something better that we can do
* That everyone is suited to the new task
The US has the people and the resources to do all the manufacturing required and to modern-day standards. The problem rests with business - for they are the cause of sub-par conditions via their preference for slavery.
We should buy cheap parts from China, and the Air Force should buy their tankers from Airbus. Why? Because those countries foolishly subsidize those products; China with the blood and sweat of their population; Europe with hard currency. So its basically a hand-out for us. We'd be fools not to buy those things, and in the tanker case we actually are being supremely foolish. All this hand waving about patriotism and security will just end up lining the pockets of defense contractors, without any proven improvements in security.
While you hand the enemy sensitive plans to defense products and compromise national security. The product is made worse for it being unduly internationalized.
Buying from a proven enemy such as China has no good for civilian or military goods.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Looks like a brilliant military strategy. Sow weakness in a potential adversary by taking advantage of their greed and shortsightedness to compromise their military equipment. Never really know until one HAS to use it --- and by then it will be too late. And in a conflict, equipment tends to get stressed a lot more than in regular drills so these quality issues will be more significant. And you really have to wonder if there is anything hidden in the tons of electronics imported from 'over there' that is everywhere. Oh, well, we will find out... someday.
I don't know how problems with Communism have anything to do with the problems inherent with Capitalism. They each have different issues they must contend with . I was trying to point to the root of one of the problems with Capitalism (e.g. we'll do anything for a buck, even become dependent on Chinese manufacturing so long as we get inexpensive goods). I think Capitalism is the best of what we've got but it needs a lot of care and feeding to work.
China is a country to which we keep a nuclear deterrence, in the eyes of many members of congress. When they approve a new start treaty or an arms bill, theyre thinking of china when once they thought of russia.
the cautious approach to china, that is accepting its slave labour with one hand and readying yourself for war with the other, is the ultimate hypocrisy of american capitalism. That you can simultaneously consider a country an enemy and a trading partner shows just how far free market economics can go toward making your country utterly contradictory.
have butter or have guns, but for god sake dont turn around and complain about counterfeit parts for the weapons you procure with your trading partner as consideration for their target. Equally, dont complain about the "slave labor" practices and "harsh crackdowns" from the government that basically stocks the shelves of every walmart in the country.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Some enterprising young politician could build a career on this:
1. WTF are we buying our products from a country with a political system that, at its very core, seeks the destruction of our political system?
2. We should be building all the parts we use in our military right here and I'm passing a law that requires it.
3. U.S. manufacturers bring product back from China.
4. Something about profit is supposed to go here I think.
Whatever. No one is reading this anyway.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
No, but it's sure as hell working for the Chinese.
In Soviet Russia, manufacturers bring China to diner.... Your right, no one is reading this far down.. I think....
Gravity!... It's not just a good idea... It's the Law!
A much simpler test would have been to put out a purchase req. for parts for a certain stealth helicopter. The disproportionate response to fill parts for the tail rotor assembly would have been a dead giveaway.
Scary thing is fake parts also find their way into commercial aircraft as well. There is a large black market for cloned aircraft parts and low budget airlines cant resist buying them and they are hard to tell if they are real or not.
If you're building fighter jets, nuclear reactors and submarines, why would you buy parts from anywhere but direct from the manufacturer?
Communism isn't what's driving Chinese economic growth. China is growing in spite of Communism and due in large part to the "needs" of consumers like the USA. Communism will be tolerated in China only as long as they are prosperous economically, then they'll follow the path all societies take (e.g. Feudalism --> Capitalism --> Socialism --> Communism --> Feudalism --> etc. forever).
I thought critial level parts like the ones they were ordering were not allowed to be purchased from China to begin with?
Boys and girls, this is what happens when our new secretary of state shows up in China with a huge pile of fraudulent home mortgage swaps and tells China , "Here's repayment for the cash you lent us." This just after Bush's punks dumped several tons of gold plated tungsten in Hong Kong for mainland China's payment of debt and tried to blame Hong Kong before realizing someone on the net had posted the New Jersey foundry's work order and receipt for the casting service. This tungsten was an attempt to arrange a criminal fraud on China. It was reported England likewise tried the same scam on India a month later. You get what you pay for. time for the American people and British citizens to take out the trash before the royals and the dem/reps have us too hungry to move. It is in the works to stave us just like they did during the great depression in the 1929 and later period.
But will America STAND UP AND TAKE NOTE OF THE CRIMINAL, BASE, immoral behavior and turn things around? Not with Hillary at the helm of foreign affairs. Her psychopath credentials are all in order, thank you.
First the US outsources manufacturing and thereby loses technical know-how to even specify or buy, let alone manufacture.
Then the US insists on bargain basement prices which creates a Market for Lemons for nearly every kind of part by driving out legitimate vendors and attracting only scam artists. Key to a Market for Lemons is information asymmetry; exactly what outsourcing created.
The entire problem is 100% self-inflicted by government and industrial policies; I have no damn sympathy for the cry-baby reaction to when the inevitable happens nor do I condone any of the half-assed methods being used to solve the symptoms and not the problem. I mean you DARPA!! What a piss-poor program definition their anti-counterfeiting initiatives are! Not even viable by the laws of physics or any know engineering technique!!! But it DOES create a Market for Lemons for anti-counterfeiting - most every company getting money from DARPA for this is selling lemons to DOD!! It sort of fits that they create Market for Lemons to try to fix a Market for Lemons!